


Rio Arriba

by CoelacanthKing



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Abuse, Childhood, Cold-Blooded Killing, Domestic Violence, Gang Initiation, Gen, Hauntings, Homelessness, Suicide, gun use, gunfights, tattooing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-03
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-09-14 12:35:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9182056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoelacanthKing/pseuds/CoelacanthKing
Summary: Through lavender and a stolen hat, ghosts, tobacco smoke and the bulk of a black hoodie, Jesse McCree learns how to keep himself grounded. And, ironically, how to let it all go.





	1. The Cottonwoods

**Author's Note:**

> Christ on a cracker. It’s finally out in the open.  
> Rio Arriba has been my labor of love for close to five months… and it isn’t done! At the time I’m posting this, a little more than half the story has yet to be covered!  
> I could have been smart about this and written a little something with only a 5000+ word count.  
> Nope. I’m a Capricorn. I must overachieve all the things.  
> My partner-in-crime in this mad endeavor was none other than the insanely talented thismissed over on Tumblr. How fortunate I was to have the Universe pair me with such a hard-working and sweet individual! My eternal gratitude goes to Em for putting up with my unhealthy obsession with mineralized animal remains and southernisms… Rest now, dear! We did it!  
> The first two chapters are being posted for the Overwatch Big Bang (the coordinators of which deserve a hearty round of applause), but several more chapters have been outlined and stand ready to be posted as an ongoing fic. I hope you enjoy what Em and I have worked on, and that you’ll stick around long enough for the rest of the story to unfold!
> 
> This chapter brought to you by: Black Country by Tonstartssbandht.
> 
> -Coelophysis bauri is the official fossil of the state of New Mexico, known mainly by a deposit containing thousands of specimens within the property line of Ghost Ranch in Rio Arriba county.  
> \- Many well known Westerns-- including Silverado, Young Guns (referenced), and the Magnificent Seven remake-- were filmed in part or entirely on Ghost Ranch property.

 ---

 

When he was seven years old, Jesse McCree found a ghost down by the river.

He had been chasing whip-tailed lizards through the brush, down into the dry ditches that ran parallel to the Rio Chama. The lizards would brake and turn on a dime, seeping into the shadows thrown by the leviathan cottonwoods that dotted the riverbank.

A dusty hop had him down in the thick of a shaded arroyo, searching for new lizards to torment when he lost track of the others. Wiping his nose with the back of his hand, prodding the crackling detritus lining the bottom with his foot, the boy was determined to scare something up.

And so he did. A pheasant, either picking through the leaf litter for food or hunkered down for a little sleep, sprang into the air the instant Jesse was on top of her hiding spot. She beat him with her wings on her way up, and only brief frames of the bird were captured as he spun backwards-- a thick bundle of tail feathers, the black and white zigzag of the underside of her wings. Jesse fell on his front, chin smacking the ground, head rattling. He whined, prodding the inside of his mouth with his tongue: he'd bitten his cheek.

Only being a wee thing, Jesse would have climbed up and went home sullen, eager for his mother to dole out sweet words and cold ice cream. But the face peering out from the wall of the ditch seized his attention immediately.

He only recognized it as a skull because of the strangeness of it. Dirt-colored, and not a person's. Long and tapered like a coyote. But he'd seen coyote and dog skulls, even a wolf skull once, and they didn't have nearly as many teeth as this thing did; tiny, knife-like, crammed into its crooked, grinning mouth. Alarmed, Jesse noted that this creature seemed to have two eye sockets on one side of it's face, bigger than any other eyes he'd known. From its lateral position in the ditch wall, the skull seemed to be staring at him with the utmost cruelty, leering, sizing him up.

Jesse was on his feet in an instant. He clambered up in a scrabbling leap, marked the spot, and then ran full tilt back home, light cutting in and out through the bars of the shadows of the cottonwoods.

He got his mother out there before dark to show her, haranguing her with pleas and tugs until she'd deemed her chile complete enough to let simmer on the stovetop unaided. She followed him out and got down in the arroyo with him, tapping her chin with curiosity.

“I think it's a dinosaur,” she marveled.

Jesse was flushed. He'd never considered, in all his childish imaginings, that it could belong to a dinosaur.

“We'll call the ranch. They'll know what to do with it.”

The next day two women with buckets and trowels and rolls of gauze showed up at their door, and Jesse proudly marched them out. They observed the specimen, smiled, patted him on the back. _Coelophysis_ , they said. “We haven't seen many of these since the Hayden quarries dried up.”

One of the scientists took out her phone and showed him an artist's rendition of what the animal may have looked like in life. Jesse was disappointed to see that the dinosaur had two normal eyes, not two on each side of its head or four in total. Still, it looked _mean_. That savage skull, now complete with mottled olive skin and a streak of red behind the eyes, was now attached to a long, muscular neck. A lithe little body, with a tail as thin and whippy as a willow branch. It had clever little arms and long bird-like legs, both of which were striped with a white-on-black pattern, like the pheasant. He'd read somewhere that birds and dinosaurs were related. Or was it one in the same? He couldn't remember.

The scientists extracted the skull from the wall, gave it a special number, and told Jesse and his mother that they could come over to the ranch any time to see it. Later, when Jesse asked her why he couldn't have kept it, she said that it would be taken care of better at the museum than be potentially lost in his room. Besides, it had been flat and cracked and oh-so old, and it'd be a shame if it broke. He glumly agreed with this.

In the end it didn't matter if the skull remained or went, because the dinosaur stayed. Sometimes, sitting among the lavender plants and blowing on his dented harmonica, Jesse jolted, swearing he'd seen a cruel eye through the sagging purple flowers. Sometimes noises came to him at night through his bedroom window from beyond; not owl or coyote or bobcat, but a croaking reptilian warble. Other instances gave him glimpses of the _Coelophysis_ strutting through the kitchen or up the dusty dirt path, like an arrogant murderous chicken.

“Do you believe in ghosts, momma?” he asked over breakfast one morning.

She answered on point, no strangeness to the question being asked at all. “Oh yes. Ghosts are everywhere.”

“Are they bad?”

“No, just wandering. We need to show them the same kindness we show the living.”

And so the dinosaur came and went from Jesse's periphery, and he allowed it to.

\---

“Jesse! Turn off the TV!”

The command was registered, but not acknowledged. Jesse sat cross-legged on the woven rug, gripping his harmonica, on edge as he took in the final scenes of the movie. He'd watched this one too many times to count, could nearly quote it by heart. On screen, a battered young gunslinger sat atop his horse, steel-eyed and determined. In one movement he set his gun on his forearm, took aim, found his target.

“ _Reap it, Murphy, you son of a-”_

An arm swept across the screen and thumbed the corner of the console, and the swearing and violence was stamped out and muted with a static click, leaving Jesse to stare at a black screen.

“Momma, no! This is the best part!” Jesse voiced his objection from the heart, going up on his knees and reaching out for his mother, pleading. She gently brushed his hands away, smoothing down her blouse and blowing out a heavy breath.

“The truck is pulling up, amor. You've seen this movie a thousand times, go and wash up.”

“But it's the _end_ !” He felt a tremor building in his lip. He didn't care if he'd watched it all before, he _had_ to see it. It was only alright if the bad guy died, if justice was delivered and the story told. Jesse believed that with all of his eleven-year-old heart.

But his mother was having none of it. “Amor, please. We need to be kind to abuelo, he's bound to be tired from the drive. Please. For me.”

If he'd been less courteous, Jesse would have failed to see the anxiety in her eyes, the stiffness of her shoulders. But he did. And so, because he loved his mother, he did what was asked, pocketing his harmonica as he stood and trotted to the bathroom. Once there, he ran water over his hands and smoothed back his hair, pleased when a single lock fell out of place. Rugged, like a cowboy.

The house told him something was amiss the instant he stepped out of the bathroom. A quality had changed in the air, eliciting a tug at his nerves. Like a rabbit withering under the hawk's stare. His bare feet padded across the wooden floors, fingers dragging over sandy adobe stucco. The house felt it too, and it’s familiar corners and spaces did nothing to comfort him.

His mother stood at the door with a man he did not know. Old, lean, but not bent in the slightest. A man who wore proud leather boots, perfectly creased trousers, and silver rings on all of his fingers. Dark skin, blue eyes, and a gray braid that draped over his shoulder like a coiled snake.

_Your grandfather is coming to live with us. He lived in California, but he's leaving because of the omnics. So he'll be staying here, with family._

Jesse took in all of these things, but did not linger on them. All of his focus was turned on the hat.

The slope of the wide brim touched something familiar deep inside of him, made the breath catch in his throat. An object glinted against the band, shapely and dauntless: a badge. His grandfather wore it with an air that needed no practice or bluffing. It was the kind of hat that demanded respect, that silenced a room.

_A cowboy hat. A real-live cowboy hat._

The adults noticed him, and his grandfather appraised the boy passively. The house warned him, but he did not hear it. Lost in the sepia glory of the hat, Jesse rushed forward, forgetting his manners entirely, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

“Abuelo! Can I wear your hat? Can I, _please_?”

His mother reined him in, chiding him, but the old man only smiled. He said nothing, but reached out and gently ruffled Jesse's chestnut hair. Leaving his bags at the door, he strode toward the kitchen and the scent of food, heels scuffing the wooden floors-- the dry click of a diamondback's rattle.

\---

Old Man Moreno-- and that was the only name Jesse knew for him, besides abuelo-- took to living in the pottery shed behind the house (there was no pottery in there, but it had a bed and a window and privacy, and he said he didn't need anything else). He left it for fresh air and food and tv, which Jesse didn't mind sharing with him. But all attempts to get the old man to watch Westerns with him were scuppered when the topic of the omnics came up. Late at night, when Jesse felt his way to the kitchen for a glass of water, the glow of the screen would lure him to the living room, where Moreno would be propped up in his mother's rocking chair-- watching reports on the progress of the crisis and the latest strikes made by Overwatch.

No one really knew why the omnics were staying out of that part of the southwest. Some guessed there was something being made or tested over in Los Alamos that scared them half to death, so they kept their distance. Regardless, it got the attention of folks from all over the area, and soon cities like Santa Fe and Las Cruces and Albuquerque were practically overrun with refugees. Still, some of the wild places were staying wild, which was fine by Jesse. He'd be hard pressed to give up his scrub oak and lazy river for the grease and clutter of the cities. He loved it out there, nestled in between seams in the rainbow-tinted rock, with nothing but the trees and the animals and the essence of the wilderness for company.

His mother dabbled in tinctures and natural remedies, crafted from what she harvested in the small garden that grew at the front of the house, selling mostly to their neighbors and other folks within the county. Along with the savory white sage and soapy lavender that she relied on for her work, they produced many of their own vegetables from the patch, and the interior of the house was constantly florid and fresh. She was the same way-- cinnamon skin always supple with her own salves (though her hands were constantly chapped), hair as glossy and thick as a horse's tail. Ofelia Moreno was a small woman, but her spirit was vast, heart big enough to beat for five people combined.

She was the axis on which Jesse’s world spun; he adored watching her sieve the solids for tea and beeswax soaps out of glossy copper pots on the stovetop, loved the afternoons when they could throw on a movie and quote it back to front, starting one in the span it took to make dinner, finishing it, and starting up another as they settled down on the couch with their plates.

But the old man was different. He took no interest in the business his daughter had made for herself, instead choosing to either lurk in his shed or take his old cobalt F150 out and drive all day long, returning at night silent and hungry. It seemed he had no real interest in Jesse, treating him more or less like a fixture in the house. He prefered to speak in Spanish, the edges of which Jesse only just knew how to grasp, even though he spoke it from time to time with his mother. It seemed to be the main buffer between them, although Jesse, still a child, could surmise that there were other reasons.

“So,” probed Moreno during a rare afternoon spent with his grandson, the two walking the river trail in a loop, “no superheroes or fast cars for this little boy? Only cowboys?”

“Uh-huh.”

The old man chomped on a waterlogged toothpick, face shaded by the brim of the hat. “Must be that McCree blood in you, eh?”

“Uh-huh,” Jesse echoed, and the old man laughed.

“Who's your favorite?”

That was like asking to pick out a favorite cloud in a sky full of them. But if he _had_ to answer... “El Chavato! He was awesome.”

“I don't know much about him, to tell you the truth.” Jesse was appalled, so he spent the better part of ten minutes waxing poetic on William H. Bonney while keeping stride with his grandfather. Above them, the boughs of the cottonwoods swung in the wind.

At the end of the loop grew a stand of young aspens, leaves still small and quaking in the early spring air. One of the trees closest to the trail had been felled, base splintered and the whole thing tipped out onto the path. The damage suggested wild cattle had been through not long ago, hoofprints and shredded vegetation strewn all around. They couldn't step around the fallen tree, because there was a ditch on the opposite side of the path. So they'd have to shimmy through it.

Moreno was lankier and longer legged than his grandson, so it took no effort for him to step through the bristling branches. But Jesse had to work at it, coming through at a different angle, batting away sagging leaves and sharp twigs while trying to keep his narration going.

“And then he went down to Old Mexico again, but Pat Garret found him, and people say he was shot in the- _uff_!” The loose laces of one of his shoes became snagged, the other foot slid on the smooth bark, and Jesse fell in an ungainly heap in the mess of branches, breath leaving his lungs in a pained puff. He kicked, squirmed, managed to free his shoe, but kept slogging in the arboreal tangle.

Moreno stood beyond on the path, not assisting in the slightest. Chewing his toothpick he looked on, the apathy unmistakable in his expression. Wasn't he going to help? And as if the old man could read minds, he turned on his heels and started to step down the trail, leaving his baffled grandson to extricate himself from the tree.

\---

Suspicions about the old man were beginning to nibble at Jesse's mind, and the incident on the path became the first of many unusual happenings. One minute Moreno would be telling a story about his days as a ranch owner in California, the king of his own little country, and then, to his mother, he'd rasp: “Ofelia, you should have stayed in California. Omnics or not, New Mexico was a poor choice.”

The accusation had come out of nowhere and was stinging to both of them. How dare this stranger judge his home? But his mother said nothing, keeping her eyes down while she flipped tortillas on the bare stovetop, sooty and coil-branded.

He began to remind Jesse of a Western antagonist. Cunning, sharp with his words, used to getting what he wanted. A real-life Ned Pepper, a Sheriff Brady. His very own Angel Eyes.

Some afternoons, when the school bus dropped him off at the top of the slope, Jesse would circle the house once or twice before entering, prodding the mood of the property. It was during one of these scouting missions that he discovered that Moreno owned a gun. Upon his return he spotted the F150 parked out front, but that didn't mean anything. The old man could have gone for a walk. He went around back and was skirting past the pottery shed, about to deem the coast clear and head inside when an unmistakable click seized him where he stood. The noise was like thunder in the way that it held him there, in the scrub oak, half crouching in the dust. It was familiar to him; he'd know it in his sleep.

Another, then another. The sounds were coming from inside the shed. _Click-click-click_. Moreno was in there, and he was murmuring to himself. A whisper of metal on metal. The cold snap of a hammer being pulled. Jesse could see all of this in his mind's eye, could almost feel the gun in his own hands, imagining himself fingering in the bullets, rolling the cylinder down his arm. A revolver, otherwise he would not have recognized the subtle sounds.

He listened to his grandfather loading and emptying the gun for close to an hour before the metal was muffled by cloth or case, and the old man emerged from the shed to make his way to the house. He didn't see or sense Jesse, and Jesse breathed a little prayer as Moreno stepped inside by the back door. Sometime later he left his hiding place, knees screaming, and made his way to the front, entering as he would on any normal day. The old man was carving up an orange-fleshed melon in the kitchen, in one of his unusual pleasant moods, and he invited his grandson to take a slice.

He saw how the man's presence affected his mother. The buoyant, brilliant woman he loved was replaced with a toneless version of herself whenever her father was near. Subdued, scuttling, and Jesse couldn't help but recognize the stance of a scared child.

“He's terrible,” Jesse confessed to her in private, thirteen years old. A little more opinionated, a little brassier. “Why did he even come here? Why did you _let_ him come here?”

Ofelia clicked her tongue, pressed down on the cutter, placed another doughy circle on the baking sheet. The kitchen air was full of sugar and anise and sunshine, the table warm and solid-- he observed how flour collected in the cracks that ran along her palms. He'd remember this, years on down the road, when he'd suddenly develop a craving for biscochitos that couldn't be satisfied.

“He's family,” is all she said.

\---

Jesse had gone to a neighbor's house to see one of their newest horses, a buckskin mare with the prettiest eyes imaginable. She was still young and a little spirited, and he'd perched on the split-log fence and watched as she trotted and whinnied and badgered the other horses out in the field. A little more work, they said, and she'd be more than happy to take him for a ride. The promise set Jesse to buzzing-- a vision of himself atop that beautiful horse, guiding her onto the river trail and through the water, up onto the basalt-studded mesas, was more than he could handle.

But it was getting late, and he had plenty of time to daydream at home. Saying his goodbyes, he picked his way through the brush, onto the trail, across the strip of cracked blacktop. Their house was down a tilted dirt path that ran down off the main road, sheltered in the crook of a small canyon. Out front was the garden, sparse at this time of year; stalks of rattling corn, shriveled chile plants, the spokes of dried lavender ready to be pulled up for the winter.

He would have pulled aside the gate and stepped in if not for a sudden and explosive movement beside the chile. An animal no bigger than a coyote loped into view, braying, coming to a halt long enough to give Jesse a condescending glare from the corner of its eye.

_The dinosaur._

It stood between him and the house, hooting, flexing its clawed hands, stamping the ground with patterned legs. It was anxious, impatient. Before Jesse could even start to guess its intentions, the _Coelophysis_ shot away, bounding over the lavender and into the evening, giving a reedy croak as it went.

It had all happened in the span of five seconds, and Jesse was left reeling. The animal's streaked skin had complimented the failing light so well that he wasn't certain if it had actually been there at all. It had been a little over a year since he'd last seen the dinosaur... Why now? What did it want? But since it was near impossible to guess the business of ghosts, Jesse smoothed out his composure, cleared his throat, and headed inside, giving a look behind as he shut the door.

The house greeted him with stillness. The rocking chair and sofa, the blocks of the framed photos and stacked blankets, were familiar to him when he flicked on the light to the den, but nothing about them told Jesse that his family was near. No concoctions brewed in the kitchen, and no light fractured out from beneath any of the doors.

“Momma? Abuelo?”

No responses. Then he remembered that his mother was visiting a friend down the road, and the old man was most likely asleep in the pottery shed. It seemed that Jesse had the evening to himself.

He got to feeding himself, throwing some leftover rice and beans and squash into a cast iron pan, scraping it all into a bowl and vegging out at the kitchen table with his phone. At a quarter to eight the canyon had completely engulfed the house in shadow, and Jesse cleaned up his meal and headed to bed, realizing that tomorrow was a school day and that he was more tired than he thought.

He only bothered to kick off his shoes, falling on top of the comforter in his jeans and socks and too-big tee. He assured himself that he'd shower in the morning if he woke up on time. A brief thought of the ghost jotted through his brain before his weariness dragged him down into heavy warmth and dark.

And then, almost as soon as he'd shut his eyes, a terrific bang sounded through the house. Jesse was roused instantly, sitting up in bed, the commotion incomprehensible to him until an accompanying shout cut through the tension.

“Ofelia! Ofelia!”

He was up and out of his room in a flash, dashing down the hall, slapping the light panel to illuminate whatever drama was unfolding. “Abuelo, what's wrong-”

The old man was standing in the living room, his hair unbraided and in disarray. He was circling like he'd just put something down only to lose it immediately. He coughed, kicked at the rocking chair, and then he focused on his grandson. His eyes were bloodshot, pink rimming the blue irises, and his lips were drawn to show his teeth. Snarling, feral.

“Where is she, where is that woman?”

Jesse floundered. “What? I don't-”

“Don't you hide her from me. Don't you play dumb.” Moreno advanced on his grandson, looming, and terror seized the meat of Jesse's back, stole the air from his lungs. He took a step back, but his foot found steady purchase there, and despite his fear he bristled like a cornered cat. The words came out in a snap.

“Back off, old man!”

The command confused Moreno, and he tottered to a halt inches from Jesse. But then he was fuming, nigh spitting in his face. “What did you say to me? Come on, vaquero. I'll knock you on your sorry ass!”

“I said-”

He didn't get to reiterate because Moreno nailed him across the temple hard enough for a sheet of light to burst behind his eyes. One of the old man's rings opened up a line on his forehead, the pain instant and keen. Right there, in that moment, Jesse understood that a gate had been opened for him, a door left ajar. His grandfather had made the first move, and all politeness and courtesy were now off the table.

He lunged, caught the old man in the chest, and they both went down. But although Jesse was thirteen and full of vim and vigor, he underestimated Moreno's strength. He was old, but he fought with a coiled ferocity that a man his age shouldn't have possessed. When they hit the floor there was a furious tussle, but Moreno came out on top. A hand clasped beneath Jesse's chin, the other seizing his hair, dragging him across the hardwood. Jesse kicked, howled, ripped at the sleeve of Moreno's shirt. With those hands at such a close and personal proximity, he could smell the metallic reek of liquor on the old man's skin.

He was hoisted up by his hair, and then the old man brought the back of his neck down on an angle so severe that he felt the vertebrae shift. The grip around his throat tightened, and through the pain and the blood in his eyes Jesse could barely distinguish the familiar curve, the stained wood: Moreno was choking him out against the band of the rocking chair.

“I knew your father.”

It was said so placidly, so matter-of-fact, that it seemed wrong to utter it in this particular circumstance. Moreno was acting like it wasn't cruel or unusual to be pressing his palm into a boy's jugular, squeezing the breath from him.

“I knew him, alright. That McCree was an idiot. Shooting off that mouth and sticking his business where it didn't need to be. Fitting that he had an idiot kid with my idiot daughter. They way I see it, one McCree got what he deserved, and the other'll get the same.”

His lungs were heaving, heart slamming against his ribs. Jesse gagged, hands pushing feebly at his grandfather's face. No good. The old man stared him down, unblinking, giving his grandson the courtesy of looking him in the eyes as he slowly killed him. Jesse was caught up in the gaze of those eyes, held fast in the pools of blue, and in some part of his brain that was still receiving oxygen, he knew what it must be like to fall prey to a rattlesnake.

And then: “What are you doing, get off, get off of him!”

Moreno was being battered by a body smaller than his own, slapped, yanked back by the shoulders. His fingers slid out of Jesse's hair, and there was just enough strength and leverage left to plant his foot in the old man's gut and give a solid kick. He went sprawling, and Jesse sucked air greedily, exhales producing foam at the corners of his lips. The room was spinning-- it felt like the floor was going to tilt up and slide him over the edge of some vast pit. But then he was gathered up in someone's arms, the world stilled, and words were crooned into his ear, “ _Jesse, Jesse, mijo, are you okay?”_

Jesse coughed and gripped a handful of her jacket, breath rattling, listening on as a half-conscious third party while angry words were raised in Spanish.

“The brat attacked me, Ofelia! He's a good-for-nothing savage!”

“He wouldn't hurt a fly! What kind of a man harms his own kin, especially a child?”

“He's wild. I blame bad blood... You brought this on yourself, woman. You raised him to be like this.”

A pensive pause, then: “I want you out of my house. Get your things, get in your truck and go. I don't want you anywhere near my son ever again.”

Jesse's neck throbbed, and time seemed to speed up, slow down, in the span of a moment. Then the back door was slamming, and his chin was tilted up oh-so gently, and his mother was brushing the bridge of her nose against his: a familiar and loving gesture between the two of them.

“It's okay now. He's leaving, he won't hurt you again... Pobrecito, it's okay now.”

He was thirteen, too old to be coddled and too heavy to be carried. But she helped him onto the sofa all the same, swaddling him with blankets and pillows, propping his neck up.

“He was looking for you,” Jesse burbled, bearing down on the cold tea and aspirin she brought him. “He was going to hurt you.”

“Just let him try.” Ophelia found a spot to perch beside him, and he leaned into her warmth and softness eagerly as she mopped his brow clean, applying band-aid after band-aid over the cut. There was shock and guilt and infinite sadness spread across her features, and Jesse thought he'd never seen her so unhappy in all his life. “Lo ciento, Jesse. I never meant for any of this to happen.” Twisting so she could kiss his forehead: “I've hurt you terribly. I'm so, so sorry.”

“You didn't do the hurtin',” he pointed out, but before he could go on there came a thunderclap from the rear end of the house, a peal of noise that drew a shout from each of them. They clung to each other, eyes fixed towards the back, waiting in heightened unease for a second report to announce itself. It never did.

A whole minute rolled by. Two. Five.

His mother got to her feet, reluctant to pull away from her son but doing it all the same.

“Stay.”

He would have stood alongside her, but his legs had turned to jelly, so he reached for her instead, pleading. “Momma, no-”

“I said _stay_ , Jesse.” With that tone of voice, there would be no arguing with her, and Jesse watched her step cautiously into the hall and towards the back door, cracking it open. Anxiety gnawed at him, wearing his nerves down to a stump, fidgeting and whimpering and near hysteria. _The gun the gun oh why didn't I ever tell her about the gun let her be okay please God please please please._

She returned presently, and he gave a cry of relief to see her well. But she wasn't well. Ofelia dragged her heels, shuffling to a stop against the wall. She wasn't bleeding, but her slouch and shallow breaths and thousand-mile stare told of a different kind of wound. She clutched at her breast, gasped, and turned towards her son.

A whole conversation was had without anyone speaking, and Jesse understood what had happened.

When he could stand they migrated out onto the front porch. Autumns in northern New Mexico were always surprisingly chilly, so Jesse sat swathed in a blanket while she donned her jacket. Per her nature she brought them something warm to drink; two nuked mugs of milk that seemed flatter than when it was warmed properly in a saucepan.

Moths battered themselves against the porch light, and out past the dirt lane a car blurred down the road at high speed, headlights cutting a harsh florescent swathe through the dark.

“He was rough on us girls, but he never hit us.” Ofelia turned the mug around and around in her hands, slurping a bit off the top every now and again. Her voice seemed to be coming from a long ways off, a lingering echo. “He was furious when you came along... He pretty much disowned me, you know.” He hadn't known. “Didn't want me anywhere near him or his ranch or any of our family. So we came down here, just the three of us. You weren't even born.”

When I got a hold of him after the omnics got to Los Angeles, he was desperate to get out of the state. I don't know, maybe I thought that the years had mellowed him out, taken the bite out of him...” She scoffed, shoulders heaving with the motion. “What was I thinking?”

Having finished his drink as soon as it had been handed to him, Jesse set his mug aside, let the blanket slide away, and embraced her. She leaned against him, hunched, a hand coming around to cradle the back of his head.

“You're such a good boy. I love you so much.”

He woke in his own bed, not remembering being carried or walking back. His phone was convinced that it was almost three in the morning, but to Jesse it felt like the concept of time had been wiped away completely. The dark and the desert had swallowed them up, sun bundled away to some far corner of the universe, never again to warm the hills and the river.

Cocooning himself in the sheets, Jesse’s mind wandered dangerously. How would anything be remotely okay ever again? He concluded, despite his mother's care, despite the pain in his neck settling to a gentle beat, that it wouldn't. His grandfather had been crazy, for sure. He'd drunk himself murderous, going after them both. And then, when he'd been denied their blood, he'd turned his bitterness on himself. Jesse knew why he did it: the vindictive bastard wanted them to live with the guilt of his death. He didn't doubt that, once they went out to the pottery shed in the morning, they'd find a note or epitaph claiming that the cruelty of kin had driven a poor old man to claim his own life.

The bastard wasn't going to get the satisfaction, in this or any other life. Not from Jesse anyway.

He didn't know how or why he came to the decision, but when it cemented itself in his mind he knew that he wasn't going to deviate from it. He slowly slid out of bed, savoring the lingering warmth of the sheets as he padded over to the light switch, flicked it on, and got to work.

As silently as he could, Jesse took his backpack down from its hook, slowly and carefully removing the homework, candy wrappers, dog-eared books. He placed these things gently on the floor beside the bed and replaced them with shirts and pants, socks and boxers. He found the envelope taped to the underside of his dresser, containing the money he'd earned and scrounged and saved since he was ten. It would be enough to start with. Once dressed he turned off his phone and left it on the pillow.

In the kitchen, under dimmed lights, he gathered some apples and two crinkling cellophane rolls of crackers, a jar of peanut butter, and filled his water bottle to the brim. He skirted the back door for understandable reasons. When everything he needed was packed away, Jesse fetched his boots and canvas jacket from where he had shed them upon returning home that evening. He recalled the pretty young horse and the walk down the river loop, and his brain couldn't process the fact that those had happened just a few hours before. And then there had been the ghost, and Jesse understood then what it had tried to warn him about. Rubbing his sore throat, he thought: _At least learn some English for next time. I don't speak dinosaur._

A shape beside the sofa caught his eye just as he was about to duck into the bathroom for his toothbrush, a last-minute necessity. He had been in no fit shape to notice it earlier, but now that he did, he sucked in a thrilled little breath.

It was the hat. It had most likely tipped off Moreno's head when he tromped through the house, and now Jesse swept it off the floor and admired it up close for the first time-- tapping a fingernail against the bronze badge, brushing the width of the brim, turning it over and over and over in his hands. He looked down the hall to the kitchen and the back door, beyond that, to where the old man lay out in the dark.

“You owe me,” Jesse muttered to whatever bit of his grandfather still lingered. With a little trepidation and mounting glee, he set the hat upon his head. It was a little big for him, but he'd grow into it.

His mother's room was the final stop. He'd relied on the fact that she was a heavy sleeper to aid his packing, and now Jesse stood beside her bedroom door. Within, she was most likely having her own restless sleep, and he wouldn't disturb her.

“I love you, momma,” he murmured to her. Knowing that she couldn't hear him, but saying it all the same. “I'll be back. Maybe not soon, but... I'll be back. I promise. Te amo.”

When all of the lights were off and he was certain that he had everything he'd need, Jesse McCree opened the front door and stepped out into the night. The porch light was still on, and he loitered in the harbor of its glow-- thinking of the house and memories and the kin he was leaving behind-- then walked off the porch and past the garden, brushing against the wilted lavender, up the dirt path and onto the road that twisted through the wilderness, along and above the dark ribbon of the Chama.

 

 


	2. The Gorge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are! Nothing much to report, since chapters 1 and 2 were posted together.  
> As some might have guessed by reading the notes and descriptions from the previous chapter, I’m very much a note-taker and an observer. My father played a huge part in getting me hooked on the American West as a kid, through VHS Westerns and countless road trips, and I’m still feeling the repercussions of that obsession to this day.  
> As for why the dinosaur is an element in the story, well. I’m a paleontologist. It was mandatory. As is the decision to insert a little bit of Magnificent Seven goodness into the narrative.
> 
> This chapter brought to you by: Southbound by Ben Caplan.
> 
> -The granite marker that sits at the Plaza in Santa Fe is dedicated to Gen. Stephen W. Kearny, who created a system of government for the newly formed territory of New Mexico in 1848. Kearny’s nephew, Gen. Philip Kearny, is infamously known for his death at the Battle of Chantilly (American Civil War, 1861-1865), where he was killed by an unknown member of the Louisiana Tigers using brutal and mysterious means.  
> -’New Mexico True’ is a slogan known to the residents of the state, depicting authenticity and stalwartness among its natives.

\---

 

He had been to Santa Fe only a few times before, with his mother. Jesse had recalled pressed clothes and stiff backs, the sterile interior of a building, and the similar featureless woman behind the desk. Files had been gone over, emotions barely kept in check. Eventually: “ _ I'm sorry. There's no record of a Michael McCree coming through here.” _

The last visit had been years ago, and Jesse doubted that he could find the building again. Besides, Santa Fe was just a stepping stone. He'd stay for a while then continue on, maybe further south to Albuquerque, maybe take the Glorieta Pass. He'd kill for a chance to walk that winding trail, trek beside the shades of New Mexicans of old. But it seemed that the capitol had other plans for him.

Jesse told himself that he could walk past the city limits any time he wanted, that there wasn't anything keeping him there. But such was the way with cities; they lured people with their jobs and movement, money and noise, and the human spirit was drawn to these things in an almost frightening way. Santa Fe, being an older city, older than many of the civilized places in the country, was no exception.

A year after the end of the Crisis, and the refugees were just beginning to stagger out of the southwest. Santa Fe had undergone massive expansion, government funded camps and housing sites going up nearly overnight, spreading out from the city proper in dirty grids. Just as quickly the sites were emptying, and Jesse found that it was easy to get lost in the flow of bodies and stories; no one thought it curious that a teenager hung about the Palace of the Governors with the jewelry hawkers, or slept bundled at the feet of a bronze Saint Francis in the cluttered yard of the Cathedral Basilica with twenty others. He was just another uprooted human in an exodus of them, and so Jesse began to feel the spell of the city seep into his heart, numb his senses, and take a hold of him.

He was eating a mealy pear on the corner of the Plaza when the men spotted him. Early November had forced citizens who had the luxury indoors, and so the city square was more or less deserted. But Jesse had grown up in the sticks, and so this weather wasn't abnormal or unpleasant to him. He sat against a squat stone marker that had been placed back in the 1800's, dedicated to some Union officer, debating on whether he wanted to use a whole five dollars to buy a bit of bread when a shadow was thrown from behind.

“Hey. Kid.”

On edge immediately, Jesse jolted in place and turned a swift circle on the bricks. A man leaned above him, separated by the marker, with an associate hanging to the side. Both of them were white, and clad in a conglomeration of leather and canvas, straps and buckles and small jangling metal bits festooning the cuffs of their stiff jackets. Two thirty-something punks who looked well-fed, and thus Jesse had reason to be concerned.

The one standing closest slapped his knee, lips splitting apart in a triumphant grin. To his cohort: “I told you, I knew it was him!” To Jesse: “You're the kid? The one that's been on all those posters?”

Jesse hadn't known about any posters. Before he could protest or question anything, the one who'd asked leaned forward and swiped the hat off the top of his head, either to get a better look at his face or to goad him. But Jesse wasn't having any of it. He was on his feet in an instant, taking a single loping stride towards the stranger and taking his hat back, punching the would-be thief in the chest as an afterthought. He'd had to brawl with other drifters since coming here: fighting had become second nature to him. But his gesture was shook off with a  _ whoof  _ of breath, followed by a brassy laugh as the man patted the place where Jesse had struck him.

“You've got spunk! No wonder they're after you!” His comrade came around and stood with him, and Jesse saw his own backpack swinging from his fist, no doubt snatched the moment he'd looked away. Keeping hold of his hat with one hand, lest it was taken again, he lunged with his free one, snarling, trying to make himself seem bigger than he really was. But the men flowed away from him like water, and they came back together in the place where Jesse had just been standing, laughing. They obviously had practice playing keep-away with vagrants.

“Come on, don't be like that! What're they after you for? Robbery, arson, murder?”

A smattering of memories, fleeting, were shaken out of his memory at the mention of murder.  _ The click of the gun in the pottery shed. Blue eyes.  _ Something in the quality of his expression must have changed, because the punks reacted to it with raised eyebrows and slightly impressed scoffs.

The one who hadn't spoken yet did so. “Killed someone? Jee-sus! How'd you do it?” The other punk cuffed him on the shoulder in annoyance before addressing Jesse again. His tone had changed-- now he was playing the part of a mediator.

“You need any help? Any protection?”

Wary: “I don't need anyone's help, give me back my pack.”

“Kid, seriously. Them posters haven't been up for more than a day. If anyone else finds you, you're gonna be carted off right quick.”

“Why? There's a reward or something?”

“Naw, but listen. You don't wanna be out here, do you? Living with the rest of the bums? You're New Mexico True, huh? I can tell.” Jesse nodded at the familiar slogan, and the man tossed him a disarming smile. “Yeah, a local boy! I'm from Deming myself, I can tell. What's your name?”

“Jesse.”

“Jesse, hey. Listen. It's been getting colder, huh? It always gets cold up here. This weather needs to stay up in Colorado if you ask me. I'd hate to see a good  _ en-em  _ boy homeless, especially when it's fixin' to get colder. We're with some folks, right? There's a bunch of us living down south, wild and free, away from the cities. If you're looking to stay under the radar you could come with us.”

_ Wild  _ . The word was a knife, slashing open the the veil cast over him by the loom and press of Santa Fe. His heart quivered, and if he was any younger he'd have started to cry, right in front of these grown men. Yes, he needed to go. But not necessarily go  _ back  _ .

Pulling himself together, standing a little taller, Jesse put his foot down. “If you give me back my stuff and buy me dinner, I'll think about it.”

And there it was. He caught the backpack when it was swung over to him, and the man who had swiped it in the first place came over and patted his shoulder. Almost brotherly. “Sorry about that, we'd have backed off if we knew you were a badass. Nice hat!”

To show that they spoke true and mean him no ill will, they brought him to a notice board set up along one side of the Palace, meant to be used as a service for refugees to contact family and loved ones, bristling with paper and holo-photos and reams of scrolling text. Fighting for space on top of other weathered photos and lost faces was a fresh white paper rectangle; there he was, crouched barefoot in the garden with his harmonica in only a pair of jeans, beaming at whoever had taken the photo and flush with the summer sun. Below it read:

_ MISSING | JESSE PERALTA MORENO (MCCREE) | LAST SEEN SEPTEMBER 30TH, 2056 _

The poster went on to include where Jesse was last seen, where he may have gone, and who to contact if he was found. It mentioned nothing about his grandfather. The punks had said that it hadn’t been up for more than a day, and that there were more… Was his mother in Santa Fe? Was she nearby? One of the men took the opportunity to tug the notice off the board and fold it up into eighths, stuffing it covertly into his pocket.

The three of them ducked into a hole-in-the-wall taqueria and ordered smothered burritos, parking at a dirty table where they popped open the clamshell containers and ate ravenously. The punks introduced themselves as Dean and Noah, and when Jesse polished his food off long before them, they cut away the corners of their own burritos and tipped them into his container.

It was dark when they emerged, and Jesse followed the pair to a truck parked three blocks away from the Plaza. From a streetlight's glow Jesse openly admired the vehicle-- a jet black crew cab, hovers wide and glinting chrome. The headlights blinked neon when Dean, the talker, fished a set of keys out of his pocket and thumbed a pad.

“Cool truck. Yours?”

Dean smirked and thumped the hood with a fist. “We all work hard, and it all pays off. Jess, we can leave you here or take you south. Your call.”

The prospect of a free ride was too good to pass up. If anything, he could part ways with these two further along at a gas station or something, and if it came to a fight, well... it came to a fight. Without a word he popped open the door to the backseat on the passenger's side, threw his pack in, and stepped up, closing the door behind him. The men hooted from outside, and they joined him within as he was buckling up.

Navigating downtown, Dean found the exit he was looking for-- the Mother Road, 66 herself-- and headed west, hitting cruise control and shucking away his coat as the heater reached a suitable level. Jesse, already having pulled his own jacket away and gradually getting dozier, caught sight of something as the driver pulled up the right sleeve of his shirt, rubbing his bicep. There was a tattoo on his forearm, illuminated by the even  _ flick-flick-flick  _ of the highway lights as they passed beneath them. A skull, framed by a pair of spread wings, gnawing on a padlock.

He would have asked about it. But his full belly, the sway of the truck, and the warm cab were a vicious combination. He fell asleep with his hat in his hands, speeding out of Santa Fe and back into the arid stretch of the high desert in the company of men he did not know.

\---

The place announced itself as Deadlock Gorge, and at first Jesse thought they'd come across a movie set. The buildings placed along the winding strip of one-way road spoke of a tacky extravagance that Jesse could almost associate with the black and white Westerns he didn't much care for. Too many white people, not enough heart.

“It was a tourist attraction,” Dean explained. “Then it all kind of fell to shit, so we came along and made ourselves at home.” He jabbed a thumb to the right, past Noah's head; from between the gaps in the buildings as they rolled by, Jesse's stomach lurched at the sight of the gorge itself, a sandstone maw that pushed up red teeth of rock around the rim. “That's Arizona on the other side.”

Since entering the gorge Noah had been madly tapping at his phone, and now he put it away to throw Jesse a friendly smile over the passenger's seat.

“I let 'm know we're just outside and that we've got company. Don't worry, Constance'll get a hoot out of you.”

“Who's Constance?”

“Boss girl. Don't ask if that's her real name, no one knows.”

One final turn had them at a dead end, as the blacktop went no further. But recessed into the sandstone wall in front of them was something quite unlike the rest of the décor of the gorge: a massive metal door, staunch and imposing, framed by thick white brickwork. In front of it, blocking their way, stood a single person. Dean parked just shy of hitting her, setting the truck onto its kickstand as he thumbed the ignition button, engine going still. Neither of the men made a move to exit, and simultaneously they looked over their seats to stare at Jesse.

“Go on!” Dean urged. “Go say hi to Constance!” Dutifully, after a moment of gaping like a beached fish, Jesse did so. He stepped out into the warmth of late morning, a balmy sixty degrees, removing his hat to soak up every bit of sunlight he could. How odd it was to not need a jacket in November.

The first thing he realized about Constance was the she had no hair. And it wasn't as if it had been shaved away; not a single fleck clung to her scalp, and she had no eyebrows.  _ She might be sick  _ , he guessed, and indeed, dark circles blotched the places beneath her eyes. But none of this meant she was weak; the woman was formidable, clad in knee-high boots and canvas coveralls, arms bared to show a plethora of wild and colorful tattoos. There, on her right shoulder, was the same winged skull that Dean bore, surrounded by a bouquet of thorny roses.

Despite her gruff appearance, Constance had quite a lyrical voice, accompanied by a blunt personality. “So. The boys found you up in Santa Fe.”

Fidgeting with the hat: “Yes, ma'am.”

“What's your name?”

“Jesse McCree.”

“You can't be a day over fifteen.”

“Thirteen.”

“ _ Lord  _ . Well, Noah told me that you're on the run. Is that true?”

Jesse scuffed his boots against the blacktop; it felt like he was being interviewed, for what he couldn't say, and he had no idea what would please this imposing woman.

“Not entirely... I can't go back home. Not right now.”

“He also said that you've killed someone.”

“...I've seen killing.”

“You look like a fit kid. What kind of work can you do?”

Dean had said that they lived off the grid out here, so everyone probably had to pull their own weight to make sure things got done. “Um, hard work? I lived in the sticks, I used to help our neighbors out with their horses and stuff.”

“And what do you think about guns?”

Again, that sense that he was being interviewed, and again came the memory of hiding beside the pottery shed. He swallowed hard.

“I don't have a problem with guns, ma'am.”

Constance fixed him with a hard stare, saying nothing. Jesse, in turn, stood as rigid as he could, staring back. Finally she allowed a smile to crack along her rough facade, sly and happy. “I like you. You're gonna do well here, McCree.”

Turning, Constance gave two sharp raps on the metal door, and with a titanic grinding of gears a seam appeared in the middle of it, halves starting to slide apart. A shape drew Jesse's gaze away from the door and to the small of the woman's back, and despite the warm weather a chill seized him. There was a pistol tucked into a back pocket of her coveralls, only the matte black grip visible over the edge. He wondered numbly if this day would have ended up differently if he'd been anything other than honest. But then Constance was gripping his shoulder jovially, pulling him against her in a friendly hug. “Come on. Let's go introduce you to your new crew.”

With Dean and Noah tailing them in the truck, Constance walked Jesse indoors onto a concrete track flanked by thick walls, bundles of fat cables snaking over the ground and disappearing over loading bays illuminated by neon lighting. His eyes had to take a moment to adjust from the light outside, but when they did he recognized the winged skull painted high onto a wall, and this time bearing a name, framed above and below: DEADLOCK REBELS.

The track swung to the right, and as it did Jesse caught sight of a pyramid of slatted wooden crates in the corner. A lid to one of the crates was ajar, and Jesse craned his neck to get a glimpse inside-- packed in raffia, glinting, peeked the barrel of a rifle. And not the kind of rifle you'd go hunting quail with... On the news, watching segments on the Crisis and Overwatch, he'd seen soldiers wielding guns like this.

The track opened up into a massive warehouse, complete with catwalks and lifts and shelving units crammed full of goods and stacked to the ceiling. There were men and women loitering against the walls, lying supine on top of crates and machinery, all clad in a similar palate of dress as Dean and Noah and Constance, and they immediately stubbed their cigarettes and took on an air of interest as their boss came into view, curious of the newcomer she toted with her.

“Deadlocks,” she announced, and her high voice lifted up to the rafters and the catwalks, where more motley faces came into view. “This here's McCree. He's one of us now. You watch his ass, and you know he'll watch yours. Rebels, how do we welcome one of our own?”

Howling, the people on the ground came at him in a rush, and Constance did her part to shove the terrified Jesse towards the mob nonchalantly. The adults enveloped him in a wave, shoving, tripping him up. But their words were genial, albeit brassy.

“Look a this kid, look at this little bastard! No meat on him! We're gonna have to feed you before we put you to work, eh? Come on, McCree, don't be so stiff! Welcome to the crew, Rebel!”

Jesse was pulled into a solid hug, and someone slapped his cheek amiably. The jostling was shaking something loose in his chest-- he hiccuped, managed a warbling laugh, moisture stinging the corners of his eyes.

\---

They gave him a cot and a locker in a dorm room that stretched the length of the longest catwalk; the Long Barracks, while the warehouse itself was affectionately known as the Alamo. Jesse had to admire their sense of humor.

Constance put him to work with a man called Zed, who housed and maintained the fleet of hoverbikes that the Rebels used and acquired. He worked out of a garage on the blacktop, away from the warehouse; he explained that he much preferred to spend his time outdoors, and Jesse agreed ardently. With the gorge looming on the immediate horizon and the high wind buffeting them with sharp, fragrant breezes, he wondered if it were possible to relocate his cot to one of the unoccupied buildings along the strip of road.

“It'll be another year or so before Constance'll let you run in there,” Zed mused, tilting his chin towards the Alamo briefly. “Until then, you're gonna keep your mouth shut and listen to what I say and do what I do, yeah?”

Jesse nodded, a diligent student, guessing that 'run' had another meaning besides the obvious definition. He'd be just fine until then, and Zed was an alright guy, even if, like all the other Deadlocks, he was more than a little coarse. The man hardly ever left the gorge on account of being too 'noticeable'. And so he stayed in his garage and lectured Jesse on torque and zero-emissions fuel and soldering, and Jesse soaked it all up, eager to learn something after nearly two months of being away from school.

At the thought of school his mind indisputably drifted back north, towards home. Was his mother okay? Was she still looking for him? He tried to not let his worry percolate. But sometimes, at night, he'd wake up to someone giving his cot a kick, and a rough voice would scrape through the dark of the barracks: “Your momma ain't here, son. Quit gibbering.”

Constance came to him after a month, butting into Zed overseeing his repair of an anti-grav component. She stamped through the open garage door, took a seat on Zed's personal swivel stool (he'd snapped at Jesse when he'd sat in it on his first day, but he turned a blind eye to the boss), and indulged in a spin before addressing the instructor.

“This one keeping up with you, Zed?”

“He's sharp. We'll toss him down the gorge if he starts to slip.” The adults laughed at the joke, and Jesse smiled coyly, aware that there was a possibility of it not being a joke.

To Jesse directly: “You liking the work, McCree?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Quit it with the 'ma'am', boy. Do I look like a 'ma'am' to you?”

“No, ma'am.”

She slapped the back of his head fondly, managing a guffaw before she was seized by a coughing fit. Backing up alongside Zed, Jesse had learned to give Constance her space during her episodes. Presently she wore herself out, wheezing, flashing him an alligator grin.

“Little shit! And here I was thinking about teaching you how to use a gun!”

Jesse felt the color drain from his face immediately. “...A gun?”

“Oh yeah. You've been here long enough. Figured you'd wanna start sooner rather than later. What, I thought you said you were okay with guns.”

“Oh, no, I am! Sure, it's just that I've... never held one before?” He floundered, barely kept his head above water: a verbal doggy-paddle.

With a grunt Constance lifted herself from the stool, wringing her hands: she was eager, and that was reason enough for Jesse to be nervous.

“Put down the flathead, boy. We're fixing this right now.”

Into the Alamo they went, passing other hooting Rebels (“New kid's gonna get it!”), through a set of double doors that Jesse had been previously barred from. Down a short hall, past another set of doors, the shooting range was tidier than most of the rest of the warehouse, even though empty cigarette cartons and energy drink cans were still tucked away under racks of guns and crushed underfoot. The range itself extended for about seven yards, low ceiling and concrete walls pitted with bullet holes, and the odor of grease and smoke was cloying and heavy in the air.

A splintered wooden counter separated the shooters from the range, and on it Constance was handling a sleek black pistol, slapping a magazine up into the grip, motioning for Jesse to come stand with her. “Put the hat away for now, cowboy. Come 'ere. Now, you hold it like.. that. There. Keep your fingers loose. We ain't got goggles or earplugs, so don't ask.”

It was in his hand before he knew what was happening. The weight surprised him more than anything;  _ It's heavy  _ , he thought, and his conscience answered:  _ Of course it is, you idiot. _

A holo screen flashed beside Constance at hip height, and she tapped in a set of commands. There were metal hatches set along the floor of the range in double rows, and one of these opened presently, raising up a padded target and moving it down a track to where it locked into place about fifteen feet from the counter.

“Go ahead and give it a go. It'll kick, but keep your arms straight and it'll travel just fine.”

“Constance, I can't-”

Her glower shut him up before he could utter another syllable. Constance didn't need to say anything, but say it she did. “Boy. Fire the gun.”

Something had caught in his throat-- maybe disgust, maybe fear-- and he choked it down with a grunt. Constance scared him, but what scared him even more was the thought of what might happened if he disobeyed.  _ She's not keeping you around to eat their food and fix bikes. You gotta do this. _

Jesse planted his feet, kept his hips loose, and expelled the breath he didn't known he'd been holding. How did the cowboys from the movies do it? Half cocked, on horseback, whooping and hollering to wake the dead. No, that wouldn't do.  _ Small steps, Jesse. Learn how to be a gunslinger later.  _ He raised his arms, resisting the weight of the gun, squeezing the grip with his right hand and cupping the butt with his left as Constance had shown him. Finger on the trigger, breathing through his anxiety.

A voice blossomed at the corner of his mind; not anyone he knew, an actor from a movie nearly half a century old-- a remake of a remake. A gaunt Cajun came to mind, grey-swathed and strutting and uneasy.  _ Pull that trigger slowly, so slow. Let the shot surprise you. _

And surprise him it did. He felt it before he heard it-- 'kick' was an understatement, as the pistol snapped in his grip so hard that he nearly dropped it. A surge of something electric went down his arms, into his neck, twanged down his spine and set his knees to wobbling. The sound, however brief, was immense, a resonating  _ pak  _ that settled into his jaw and stung his eyes, reverberating over the pockmarked walls.

Despite that messy first fire, Jesse was surprised to learn that he'd actually hit the target. There was a neat little hole clipped through the top corner of the padded rectangle, edges scorched. The holoscreen had recorded the bullet's velocity and PSI as it hit, and even though Jesse couldn't make heads or tails of the numbers, he was thrilled, almost in a manic way, that he had made them pop up at all.

Constance praised, “That was an alright shot. You think you can feel your way around what to do now?”

He nodded, took his hand away from the grip to rub at his eyes, and then he was lining up a second shot. He had a sense of what to do to work through the worst of the recoil, and he pressed his fingers a little closer together. He took the sharpshooter's advice again; exhaling, lining up the target down the top of the pistol, he waited.

The recoil wasn't as vicious as it had been, and the noise was expected. Jesse fired three times, in quick succession, and was rewarded for his diligence with three neat holes clipped into the target, an inch further in than the initial shot. Constance slapped him right between his shoulders before he could even gawk, honking.

“You're a natural! Here I was, worried for nothing! Go on, empty that gun.” Still terrified, riding on a wave of adrenaline, Jesse obliged. Soon his limbs were full of static, teeth clamped, ears ringing like a pair of church bells. Placing the gun on the counter momentarily to shake a little feeling into his hands, Jesse felt suddenly cocksure-- he retrieved the firearm only to drop his left hand, gripping it in his dominant right, setting his sights down the length of his arm. Behind him Constance sucked on her teeth, a sound of minor irritation. “Both hands, cowboy. You ain't hot shit just-”

He fired before she had the chance to finish, wincing when the recoil rocked him harder than he was presently used to. But he surmised what needed to be done, and he fired again, again, again. A line began to dot itself diagonally down the target, scattered like breadcrumbs, but traveling in a nebulous direction. Jesse emptied the chamber with his last bullet straddling the inside of the center mark.

The pistol was set gently onto the counter, and Jesse got to work rubbing some life back into his stiff elbow. If it had stank when he walked onto the range, now it reeked, and he coughed, turning about and ready to let Constance berate him for not following her directions.

He hadn't known when the others had shown up, but there were now four Deadlocks lined against the wall behind their boss, Noah among them. Between them Jesse could make out a handful of varied expressions; awe, incredulity, confusion. Constance herself had seemed to deflate somewhat, her jaw almost comically slack.

Still unused to being the center of attention (and realizing he was sweating like a pony), the kid pressed his face into the crook of his elbow, snuffling, stiff neck giving a series of bubble wrap pops. Beneath his boot was an empty shell, and he rolled it to and fro.

“What?”

\---

His days in the garage with Zed dwindled, as Constance insisted that he keep up with his gun practice, intrigued to see where it took him. The boss obviously had better things to do than play babysitter on the range all day, so more often than not Jesse was accompanied by at least one other Rebel. The adults would smoke and slouch on the counter and give him 'advice'-- lock up that elbow, hold it like that. But Jesse's intuition told him otherwise, and the result was a target that ended up shredded every time it stood up to him. They began to move the target back. Five, ten, twenty feet. It made no difference.

Jesse's knack with a gun surprised him as much as it surprised the adults. He had no inkling of where the talent had come from; he thought that maybe watching all those cowboy flicks had payed off, but dismissed it almost immediately. Going to see every superhero movie that comes out doesn't prove you can lift cars. But that didn't mean he kept it from going to his head; one afternoon he caught himself attempting to spin a pistol, only to make himself break the pattern because he had no holster to drop the gun into. His Deadlock chaperone, a man called Reese (who hailed from Kentucky and had the accent to prove it), gawked.

“You watch any of those wild west movies? You know the ones.”

He knew by now how to play it cool and feign indifference, and so Jesse had only shrugged.

Now that he was comfortable with handling firearms, Constance promoted him to a spot with the loading crew, long before Zed had predicted. Day to day, trucks came up the blacktop road and deposited crates and cases, full of pistols and rifles and handhelds. Deadlock's clients were ravenous for the product, and what was sent to the Alamo was broken down into specific orders to be sent out again and swapped for cash and credit chips along the dusty highways of the Southwest, behind abandoned service stations and down forgotten dirt roads. Sometimes, when the drops didn’t go as planned, Constance ordered her sweeping crew to suit up and get to the hoverbike garage; but the boy always hung back, nose in a sheaf of papers, packing crates, silent. He wasn't allowed to join these convoys, and he hoped he'd never have to be told to.

But after nearly a year of gorge-living, Jesse was still considered by some as merely a pet who did pretty tricks. Rebels who left the Alamo to 'run' and retrieve supplies began to bring him back trinkets from the roadside stops and gas stations where minor drops were made. It was mildly insulting, and Jesse would go and vent on the range until Constance came down from her catwalk office to tell him to quit wasting ammo.

“You've still got new car smell, McCree,” she explained. “You gotta rough yourself up a little, don't let 'em get at you.”

Jesse took this advice to heart-- the next day he returned to Zed's garage and harangued the man for an earring. In normal circles, one's tattoo artist and body piercer wasn't usually their mechanic. But Zed was the best the Deadlocks had (unless you were interested in doing it yourself with sewing needles and India ink). The silver ring was punched through his left earlobe with a pop and a twang of discomfort, but after admiring the glossy hoop-- careful not to agitate the swollen flesh-- Jesse thought that another might pair up nicely on the opposite lobe.

One of the empty buildings in the gorge had been revamped into a saloon the year before his arrival-- dubbed the High Side-- and Jesse found himself dropping in every now and again. Whiskey seemed to be the poison of choice among the Rebels; his mother had let him taste wine whenever she cooked with it or imbibed in a glass, so the carbon bite of the bourbon was a far cry from what he was used to. He had spluttered on his first shot-- throat seizing, belly burning-- then finished it and had another when the woman behind the counter advised he get back to the warehouse and get some sleep. It took some warming up to, but soon he grew to enjoy the taste, campfire-tinged and smoky, and the ability to both drink and fire a gun capably gave him immense pride.

Some evenings found him toeing down into the gorge, tagging alongside a few Rebels in a single file line over barely-meandered paths kept clear by bighorns and mule deer. Erosion had arranged the bottom of the gorge into uneven pockets of water and rock and greenery, and the men and women of the Deadlock gang would find a pebbled creekbed to camp alongside, gathering kindling and coaxing to life a fire large enough to keep them all satisfied. Bottle and flask passed around in a circle as bats emerged from their daytime roosts, streaming through the narrow alleyways of the gorge in a shrieking, thrumming cloud; in the black of night came the owls to hunt them, and the scorpions, and the yowling of coyotes from further along the creek (and far away, impossible to pinpoint, a distant croak that only Jesse seemed to hear). One inebriated Deadlock would always yodel along, everyone else joining in until the whole sodding lot of them were wailing to wake the dead, firing shots into the sky, sooty gun and woodsmoke wafting together into fumes that went to their heads faster than the booze did.

Those were the nights Jesse McCree felt the most alive. Those nights, he told himself:  _ yes, this is what I’ve always wanted, isn’t it? I was always meant to drink whiskey and fire guns and howl at the moon. This is who I am. _

But the glamor didn’t extend to every part of Rebel life. He had to admit to himself that the food was more or less sub-par. Deadlock fare was anything edible that came in a packet or wrapper or cup, and while there was always enough to go around, Jesse found that it left something to be desired. The Alamo contained a self-proclaimed dining hall, but no one had the patience or proclivity to ever spend a whole evening making a meal for fifty plus mouths, so beef jerky and granola bars and instant ramen became the norm. As such, he didn't so much grow as he did stretch; leggy, all sinew, letting his hair grow past his shoulders to get wrung into a messy knot whenever he had the notion to do it, hand-me-down Deadlock leathers making up a majority of his bulk.

Reese pulled him aside one day to point out the forest sprouting on his chin. Jesse, fearing some kind of practical joke, patted his face, and was surprised by the brush of hair there. Not peach fuzz-- honest-to-god facial hair. He bolted for the closest mirror, pushed his face to the glass. It was sparse and not even that long, only clinging to the cleft of his chin and in the swell below his lip, but that would change. He didn't know whether to be proud or revolted as he pinched little tufts of it, twisted, brushed it all back together. Reese caught up with him, and through his obsessive pawing the man offered to teach him how to shave.

There was something unsaid that was being violated here, some unknown rule being broken. His father-- hell, his mother!--- should have taught him how to shave. That's how it went, didn't it? But there was no use dwelling on the obvious, on the uncomfortable, so he accepted the shaving cream and the disposable razor that Reese brought him, but lingered in the washroom alone to nick himself in several places.

 

 


	3. The Vultures

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 3! I'll be jiggered, finally got around to posting this! But seeing that I have two jobs and more obligations than you can shake a stick at, I won't be too hard on myself. My move to New Mexico turned out to be a bust, so at the start of the year I ran away to Seattle for a spell before heading back to Colorado and getting back to work.  
> I like setting up buffers in my work, meaning that the next chapter of this is already finished. But instead of posting something once it's done, holding back gives me more incentive to finish it. Hence, long waits between chapters. Thanks for hanging on, I'm really proud of this one!
> 
> This chapter brought to you by: You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive by Darrell Scott.
> 
> -I went on a lot of road trips with my father as a kid... lots of half-lucid night driving in empty country.  
> -I like to think McCree would be a big fan of The Band. Had to slide in a reference somewhere.

\---

 

The months blew past, sweltering summer giving way to tepid winter. At this point there was no doubt concerning Jesse's place in the ranks of the Rebels-- Constance often lauded him as one of the best shots they'd ever acquired, and he'd won the respect and camaraderie of his fellow Deadlocks. But something in his blood had begun to churn, burning him up, making him restless. He'd been allowed out of the gorge only a handful of times, posing as a younger sibling to an older crewmate on daytime drops and supply runs. But those escapades were far and few between, and Jesse had to go weeks, sometimes months, without leaving the gorge.

Often the guns were late, showing up days behind schedule due to any number of errors, and the older men and women accepted the spontaneous lull-and-rush lifestyle of the gang by drinking and smoking and waiting for Constance to tell them to do something. If he were any older Jesse would have fallen right in along them, malleable and mellow. He hadn't yet hit his sixteenth birthday, and his spirit was hungry for motion and solitude; an unspoken urge in his blood to _go far, go away, be alone, find yourself_.

He was promoted after a stroke of good luck: bad luck for the other fellow. He and two other Rebels happened to be lollygagging in just the right spot, below the catwalk where Constance kept her office. From above and within came the sounds of an altercation-- raised voices, followed by a crack as the door was flung open, swinging full on its hinges, bashing into the wall with the glass pane shattering and sifting down through the catwalk onto their heads. The three of them pushed off from the wall, brushing glass out of their hair and looking upward to see a man come scrabbling through the door, legs barely kept underneath him as he tried to make for the stairs that lead down onto the floor. It was Dean, and even from that distance Jesse could tell that the man was petrified beyond words, squealing, retreating backwards towards the stairs while holding a hand out, attempting to keep what prowled inside the office at bay.

“Constance, god, I can explain! I can explain--”

The boss herself appeared, and her face was a mask of pure fury, utter disgust. In her hand she gripped a 9mm, and without thinking about it she took aim and unloaded a shot right into Dean's shin. He shrieked and went to his knees, but as he'd already reached the stairs, he crumpled onto the first and began to roll head over heels down the flight, hitting the bottom with a thud and dragging himself away as soon as he could move. Constance took her time coming down, glowering at the injured man, bellowing.

“You thought you could get away with this? You honestly thought you could get away with stealing from _me_?”

“Oh god, nonono, please, I can make it up to you!”

“No one steals from me! Not money, not guns, _nothing_! Did you think I wouldn't notice a couple of zero's missing? Huh?”

Dean didn't see Jesse or the others as he pulled himself past on his belly, intent only on escaping Constance's wrath-- trailing a ruddy smear behind him.

Wailing: “I had to! Ohh, I can't feel my leg, _Ican'tfeel_ \-- I can make it up to you! I can make this right! _Our Father, who art in Heaven_ \--”

She reached the ground, the rubber soles of her boots clopping dully on the poured concrete. She lifted the gun again, ready to end him, but it merely clicked when she pulled the trigger. Snarling, she tossed it behind her, and without looking extended an open palm to Jesse as she strode close: an order.

He'd been allowed to pack heat for a little over a year; throat dry, he pulled the long-barreled pistol from the holster at his right hip and palmed it over to Constance.

He could have refused. Could have done something other than comply. But then he and Dean would have been crammed into the same sinking boat.

Fresh gun in hand, she reached the struggling Dean at last, getting her boot beneath him and kicking him onto his back as he sobbed bitterly. Almost sensually, she bent her knees and lowered herself until she was seated on his stomach. He was crying, hyperventilating, and he gave a final garbled plea as she forced the barrel past his teeth.

“I liked you, Dean. I really did. If you'd've been a little smarter about this I could have even respected you. But as it stands... Well, it doesn't matter anymore, does it?”

Constance's body was positioned in a way so Jesse couldn't see the full extent of Dean's brains getting blown out the back of his head. But the smell was immediate, coppery sharp, accompanied by the stale reek of fear and guilt and shit-- the man had voided his bowels right before he died. Constance stood, coughed once, and turned away from the body; there was a vivid splash of red streaked across her face, collecting on her chin, dripping away in bright little beads. She kneaded her temple as if working back a headache, and the red was muddled and pushed up her brow, onto her scalp. She was courteous enough to give Jesse's gun a cursory cleaning against her shirt before handing it back to him. That close, he saw that there were bits of cranial matter, gelatinous, incorporated into the red.

Wheezing: “You're heading out with Reese tonight, McCree.” And then she was hauling herself back up the stairs, leaving someone else to clean up the mess. Across the way was a shelving unit full of miscellaneous parts and hardware, and out of the corner of his eye Jesse swore he saw the willowy tail of the _Coelophysis_ disappearing behind it.

Jesse's position was elevated to that of a drop driver. Or, as it stood, a drop rider. That evening, after a few restless hours on the shooting range and a shower that failed to make him feel any cleaner, he climbed into the passenger's seat of an inconspicuous 18-wheeler, it's trailer loaded with hybrid Ingram's bound for Alamogordo.

“Real shame about Dean,” Reese mused, sipping at his coffee as they cruised down an endless strip of highway, flanked by greasewood and cholla on either side. “But hey, I'm glad the spot opened up. Kid like you needs to be out and see the world, live a little.”

Jesse said nothing, choosing instead to recline his seat back a few degrees, nestle his chin into his kerchief, and watch the scrub soar past, blurring into a rolling mat of foliage; he observed how the sun dropped rapidly behind a range of jagged peaks, setting the sky ablaze in hues of indigo and poppy, lighting up the desert for another hour more.

He fell asleep during part of the ride, awoke as they passed beneath the neon portico of a service station to refuel close to midnight. They bought snacks and fresh coffee and continued on.

Living up north, among the broad-leaved trees and arroyos, the moon was always a little obscured. Down there, lost in the sheer emptiness of the Chihuahuan, there was nothing to hide it's sheen, and Jesse could have sworn that at some points in the trip they could have driven without headlights. Everything past the cab was highlighted with liquid silver-- the tops of the saguaro, the slopes of the uneven hills. Levon Helm crooned the ballad of Virgil Caine from the radio, punctuated by the uneven click of grasshoppers diving towards their headlights from the side of the road, only to break themselves open on the windshield.

They reached Alamogordo at close to three in the morning, meeting with their clients in the docking bay of a defunct canning factory. Strapping on their firearms, they stalked out of the cab and into the shine of the headlights of a circle of rugged vans, greeting the squirrely man who was their go-between. A crew of five opened up the trailer, inspected the product, found it satisfactory, and began to unload as the go-between paid them, handing over a manila folder that puffed outwards somewhat.

After taking the time to divide the cash into what was owed to Constance and what they had earned (Jesse was gobsmacked by Reese's speed, and by the paper-clipped banknotes that were presented to him), the Deadlocks bid their clients adieu and headed out of town, hitting Route 70 for a while before pulling over at a truck stop to treat themselves to some breakfast. It was greasy spoon fare, but it was the closest Jesse had come to a home-cooked meal in almost two years. This, Reese confided, was the best part of the job. It seemed that pancakes and hashbrowns and bloody steak and scalding coffee tasted the best at 4 AM, while the world at large slumbered on, unaware of them or the deals that went down in the forgotten corners of wild places.

Jesse realized, after they'd slept in the cab and headed out at a decent time, that he hadn't felt a bit of grief over Dean's death, or the part he had played in it. Dean had been one of the men to bring him on, sure, but he'd gotten what he deserved if what Constance claimed was true.

 _Better him than me_ , Jesse thought.

A notion adhered itself to his mind on the drive back, and upon their return to the gorge Jesse went right to Zed and asked for ink. It wasn’t his first time under the quill-- a single stalk of lavender graced his right bicep, done for his last birthday-- but it was more of a practice in patience than the last session. The vibration settled into his bones and teeth, the razor-sharp tremor akin to jostling down a dirt road. After tools had been set aside, he looked upon the new tattoo fondly through the cellophane wrap. His own Rebel brand, scrawled onto the inside of his left arm. He was committed now. In it for the long haul.

Other branches of the gang existed throughout the west-- dredgers who worked the tables in the garrish gambling houses in Reno and Vegas, rifle-toting horsebreakers of Colorado and Utah, and the street-wise hoodlums of Tucson and El Paso. These groups and their bosses came to know Jesse as his reputation continued to spread, and did their darndest to try and wheedle the kid out of Constance’s grip to join their own ranks. But his roots were in New Mexico, his place in the gorge. Tramping from city to city through the wild seemed to be what he had been yearning for, and he did so with the comfort of a gun at his hip, the high perch of an 18-wheeler, and a decent meal every now and then.

Sometimes the drops went as planned, and sometimes they didn't; once, he shot a man in the chest when the clients tried to jump them mid-negotiation, wanting to keep their money and earn a parcel of brand new guns for no charge. The Deadlocks all saw him reach for his hip at exactly the same time, but only Jesse had been fast enough to react. He drew, fired, and was spinning his gun back into the holster before the man had cleared leather, the firearm punctuating the flick of his wrist with a concise _bang_. He had staggered, keeping himself upright long enough to lose equilibrium and keel over anyway, gargling, and his fellows all took a step back as Jesse sucked on his teeth, shaking his head in mock disappointment.

“Shame. Well, it looks like we'll be keeping our guns, _and_ taking what's owed to us.”

The clients complied immediately, wanting to keep away from the business end of this young Deadlock who shot like the devil and came with the charm to match.

He had no qualms about killing the poor sod. He reasoned: _better him than me_ . It became almost like a mantra, after every bullet fired in violence or punch thrown or bourbon bottle broken over the back of a head. These were rough folks, and this was rough work. If he didn't defend himself they'd take his life, and so he'd fight like hell to keep himself standing, to keep his heart beating. _Better them than me. Better them than me._

 

\---

 

“McCree. C'mon, you've had enough.”

He wasn't _drunk_ , per se. Maybe overly tipsy. Tongue heavy in his mouth, Jesse attempted to lift his head from the bar, only to have his cheek stick like Velcro to the over-saturated wood.

“Aw... one more, Annie. For the road.”

The barkeep picked at the hair that had come loose from his ponytail, then confiscated the shot glass he'd been nursing. “You said that two shots ago. I know for a fact that you're heading to Silver City in the morning, and I ain't gonna be responsible for you flipping the truck over on the highway. C'mon, git. Nurse that hangover while you got the chance.”

The man seated on the stool beside Jesse's clapped him on the back, eliciting a groan from the younger Deadlock. Ballard had a reputation as the gang ox, a man who could break bones with his bare hands. “Humor the boy, Annie. These are his best years, let him enjoy 'em.”

“I don't want any of your lip, Ballard!” She slapped his hand away when it began to wander over to an unsupervised bottle of Jim Beam. “Ain't you supposed to be checkin' in on Jansen soon here?”

“All in good time, darlin'. All in good time.”

The atmosphere of the High Side, and of Deadlock Gorge in general, was one of keen listlessness. Constance's health had considerably worsened over the previous months, but more ominous than that was the fact that the outside world was beginning to encroach on the gorge. A highway was under construction not fifty miles away over in Arizona, and more than once a cement truck or load lifter discovered the nigh invisible dirt road that lead up into their desert roost, only to be politely driven back by the Deadlocks. This would keep happening the more the road was traversed, and so Constance had ordered a gate be erected further down the way: manned by a single Deadlock, it consisted only of a small guard station and a sliding door similar to the one that lead into the Alamo, and was enough to deter anyone who wandered there by accident.

However, as much as she claimed her new addition was there to keep them safe, the opinion shared among many of the Rebels was that Constance was starting to lose grip on the gang. She was doing her part to quell these rumors by promoting many Deadlocks as trusted lieutenants to uphold her rule, Ballard among them. But again it was seen by many as a sign of weakness.

Something was to going to happen, and it was going to happen soon. Mutiny was in the air at Deadlock Gorge, and Jesse hoped that, however the cards fell, he'd keep his neck clear of the worst of it.

“Fine. If you don't have the inclination, I'll do it.” Annie reached for the comm Ballard kept on hand to contact the gate, but he shooed her away with a hushing noise.

“Alright then, ya nag. I'll get on it.” He blew her a kiss and retrieved the little device while Jesse worked on sitting up straight; collecting his hat from the bar, he set it at a jaunty angle on his head, popping the collar of his shredded denim vest, an assortment of gaudy chain and bead and leather bands jangling on each wrist. Despite his time spent living in the dirt, Jesse thought very highly of his appearance, particularly when he was sloshed. Beside him Ballard was holding the comm to his ear, grimacing: Jansen, the man at the gate, didn't seem to be responding.

“Maybe he fell asleep,” Jesse offered, but the older Deadlock shook his head.

“Naw, I can hear something, it just ain't coming in very clear.” Covering the comm with a hand, he shouted into the saloon: “Everyone pipe down, I need to listen!” The twenty or so Rebels present brought the white noise down, and Jesse didn't miss the dirty looks some of them shot Ballard's way. But the lieutenant wasn't focused on them: he'd turned the comm speaker on, and now Jesse could hear what was happening on the other side of the line. But the question remained as to what exactly was happening. Head somewhat muddled by bourbon, Jesse dug a finger into his ear then leaned in to listen; there was a dragging sound, and a whistling pant that brought to mind an injured beast, full of wet and panic.

“ _Ffffffff-- fffffuuh--”_

“Jansen?”

A clatter sounded over the line, momentarily went dead, then Jansen's voice gusted through the speaker, hissing.

“ _S_ _hitshitshit get to the Alamo right now, they know I'm here--_ ”

Ballard made a face, upper lip bristling with the motion. “You aren't making any sense, Jansen. Speak up.”

At this point everyone in the High Side had quit their drinking in order to listen in, piqued by the situation that was unraveling before them. Annie turned down the radio, and Jansen's grating whispers were made doubly eerie without it.

“ _I'_ _m pinned, I'm pinned, they're gonna kill me-- Get to the Alamo, they're gonna fucking kill us all--_ ” At that moment a new noise came over the comm; the sound of something immense snapping, crashing, (The door? A desk console?) and a voice none of them recognized was shouting. Jansen had started to squeal, shrill and rabbit-like, the sound making the hair on Jesse's neck stand straight out.

“Jansen!” Ballard bellowed into the comm, losing his cool. “Jansen, who the fuck is that?”

“ _FEDS!_ _FUCKING FEDS!”_ And then Jansen's shrieking was cut short by the unmistakable report of a pulse rifle, and every living soul in that saloon was on their feet and reaching for their guns. It seemed, despite all of Constance's bribery and cunning, they'd at last been found out.

A general atmosphere of 'what the hell is going on' seized the Rebels; some argued that they should head to the gate and try to push the enemy back, while others demanded that they return to the Alamo as Jansen had said and hole up there. It ended up being a moot point when a man skidded into the High Side, lungs heaving, blood sluicing down his face and soaking into the collar of his shirt. It was Noah, and he threw himself down against the wall, keening high in his throat as he fumbled at his waist for his gun, but there was nothing there.

“F-feds,” he bleated, getting right to the point. “Th-they took the Alamo-- they're in there right now, I got out, only me! They were just... _there_! Constance is dead, everything was happening so fast, I--”

Ballard got down and seized him by the shoulders, and the nerveless Noah moaned and let himself be jostled. “How did they take the Alamo? How the hell did they get in without us knowing or hearing?”

“Over the canyon, through the gorge, I don't fucking know! Oh god, that's not the worst of it...” A moment to recover, to suck air between his teeth, then: “I think it's Overwatch.”

All at once the mood of the room went slack. Jesse felt a gust of something tangible lick at the back of his neck: genuine, unadulterated fear. Overwatch. The heroes of the Omnic Crisis. The worst possible force to be reckoned with.

From the back someone shouted: “How? How do you know?”

“I saw him,” Noah confessed, on the brink of madness. “I saw him... _Reyes_.”

The name resonated somewhat with Jesse, but he couldn't for the life of him recall why. Around him the room erupted into chatter, Deadlocks speculating and wailing and pacing like wild animals.

“Reyes? _Gabriel_ Reyes?”

“I thought he was dead! I thought he got put in the ground!”

“Oh god, we're gonna hang for sure!”

Annie saw Jesse's confusion and nudged him with her hip. She was cradling a shotgun to her breast, like a mother would coddle an infant, and her eyes kept flicking over the bar fixtures, staring into the middle distance, her voice unusually calm. “You're too young to remember right, I think. Reyes is a beast. During the crisis he scrapped more omnics than people who've died of smallpox.”

Ballard was trying to scrape together some semblance of order among the panicked Deadlocks-- with Constance dead and the rest of the crew either dead or captured, it seemed he was in charge.

“Alright, listen up! It's only a matter of time before they start a sweep through here, but we got the upper hand-- we know this place, they don't. We're gonna pull a fucking Custer, the mother of all standoffs. I don't care if we're up against God and all his saints, we ain't gonna give up our gorge without a fight!”

The Rebels gave a chorus of half-hearted whoops, rallied by Ballard's words but unwilling to give their position away. But they were all some varying degree of drunk, and this was Overwatch, and many of them didn't like their odds. But they were ordered, regardless, to divide off into two groups; the first would take to the roofs and spread out via ramp and catwalk to attempt to shoot from there, while the second, Jesse's group, would engage the enemy head on. Just as the groups were about to split, Jesse attempted to rouse the petrified Noah from his corner.

“Come on, you gotta come with, you can't stay here!”

“No,” the older man gibbered. “I'll surrender. Yeah, just give myself in. That'll work, yeah."

“If half the things about this Reyes are true, they're gonna kill you dead on the spot!”

But Noah wouldn't be swayed, so Jesse joined his group and loped out of the High Side into the heat of midday, eyes flicking up and down the strip for places to make a stand. And at that moment, Pandora's Box decided to crack itself open.

The Rebel keeping stride with Jesse dropped with a crack; he saw the hit out of the corner of his eye, guessed the angle, turned about on his heel and fired up at the top of the High Side. There was a muted gag, and a figure pitched off the roof to land with a gut-churning thud at his feet, neck broken by the fall. Jesse only took a moment to gawk at the body-- bristling in black tac gear, armed with all manner of pistols and handhelds, with no badge or ID that stated he belonged to Overwatch-- before raising a cry up to the roofs. “Get down! Get down, they're already-”

It was too late. He saw the rooftop access door to the saloon burst open, Ballard heading the Deadlocks, and all at once other dark forms materialized from points on top of the surrounding buildings to open fire on them. The man's chest burst apart in a cloud of red, and he toppled back onto the Rebels behind him.

A bullet sang past, just nicking the brim of his hat, and Jesse quit his puttering to charge across the blacktop and throw himself behind a shapely boulder rooted at the foot of the sandstone cliffs. He wasn't alone: Reese was there, as well as a few others, shooting ineffectually up at the tops of the buildings while jostling with each other for cover.

“This isn't working!” someone hollered, but they kept their position and fought on regardless. Then Reese was elbowing him, getting their attention, motioning with his chin at a spot not two yards away; recessed vertically into the base of the cliff was a hatch, the size of a kitchen tabletop and partially obscured by another boulder.

Their interest was seized; there were subterranean tunnels everywhere in the gorge, mostly forgotten, but sometimes used for storage and the like. There was an lift somewhere in the anthill that lead down to the floor of the gorge itself, and as of that moment it was the best shot for the remaining Deadlocks to get out of there alive, to reach another branch of the gang and reorganize. Potentially getting lost down in the maze was better than getting picked off up there, so the little group broke cover to dash for the hatch, man at the front giving few solid kicks to the rusted sheet metal before the lock broke away, and they scrabbled over one another into the black of the caves as the hatch swung shut behind them.

The dark was immediate, as was the drop in temperature. Their breaths were ragged, overlapping and bouncing over each other and echoing down a tunnel that they they couldn't see, but rather sensed. Someone was slapping their hands across the wall behind them, groping, and the click of a flipped switch was accompanied by a slash of incandescence opening up the dark, causing them to shield their eyes and hiss. A single neon tube hung from the ceiling, above the entrance of a dark portal hewn right out of the sandstone. Beyond it another tube ignited, then another, and soon the whole of the passage was lit by a myriad of buzzing tally marks, jotting through the gloom like dashes on the highway.

Reese and the other Rebels were already pressing forward, but Jesse was presented with a dilemma; from outside, the sound of gunfire could still be heard, meaning that the Deadlocks and their enemies still had things to fire at. He couldn't just leave what was left of his crew behind, could he? A choice was made for him as, with another buzz, a neon tube cut another swathe to the right of him-- it illuminated a chute, carved at a ninety degree angle; a string of dusty bulbs stapled into the shaft and crawling up,. Ducking in and craning his neck, Jesse saw that eventually the light bulbs quit outright, and a soft pinpoint, so far away that it's light couldn't have hit the bottom even if it wanted to, was visible. The shaft led up to open air, and hopefully to a place where he could make a stand. The height, along with the alcohol still sloshing around in his system, made him woozy.

He could have played it safe. He _wanted_ to play it safe.

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered, holstering his gun and finding a handhold, hoisting himself up.

He found that the climb wasn't terrible so long as he put his back against the chute wall and braced his feet, using them to shimmy up at a respectable pace. Anyone thicker around the waist couldn't have managed, and for once Jesse was appreciative of his beanpole physique. The open air was upon him before he had a time to realize it, shaft depositing him in something like a natural crow's nest-- erosion had crafted a beveled dip in the side of the cliff, and long ago people had come along and made improvements to it, the rear end extending into a tunnel similar to the one below, the few side paths Jesse could see branching off and tilting down. The shaft would be out of the question as a means of retreat-- too easy to break a leg going down-- and it was clear that these upper tunnels were connected to the ones below, so for the foreseeable future Jesse had a solid escape route.

The fight for the gorge was still going strong: Jesse toed his way to the lip of the bowl, gazing over the blacktop at a spot roughly twice the height of the tallest of the buildings. Because of the overhang, it wasn't a mystery as to why no one had noticed this lookout before. Below, agents garbed in their dark combat gear still perched on the rooftops of the buildings, and in between them the remnants of the Deadlock Rebels scurried like rats, ducking, taking estimated aim, dropping from a shot to the gut or between the eyes. The ozone tang of the agent's pulse rifles wafted up past the lookout, causing Jesse to grimace and spit out into the open air, hoping that it'd hit someone who deserved it.

His gun of choice was a glossy custom Beretta-- long barreled and chrome, laser-etched with tiny flourishes along the hilt. It was undeniable that it added strut to his step, shine to the weathered denim and leather that made up his wardrobe. He went through the motions with it, reloading and testing his grip and shaking out any hesitation he still had about this.

There was nothing more to be observed or calculated... jamming himself into a crook in the rock, Jesse leaned over the edge of the outlook and took aim on the unknowing agents below. One man went down without a sound, another fell comically through a railing and into the dirt. Both sides were taking notice of his interference; the Deadlocks were starting to cloister together and make their way towards the caves unhindered, while the distracted agents turned their attention to the shooter on the cliff. Bullets and ozone pulses pounded the rock surrounding the opening, and the cordite stench of burnt stone was near intolerable. But Jesse only had to duck back into the shadow, sink into the bowl, and wait for a gap in the firing before popping out and unloading a shot or two of his own. When he lined them up, they got knocked down, and he let out a shrill yawp as the gunsmoke and the ping of shorn rock and the shouts from below (combined with the fact that he was still a little drunk) began to inflate his ego and make him reckless. Narrowly dodging a stray bullet that nearly took off his ear, Jesse pressed his back to the curved floor and _laughed,_ a full-bodied guffaw that echoed madly down the corridor and out into the open air, proceeded by tears ushered up to the corners of his eyes by the hilarity of it all.

He was seventeen, only by a couple of months. He'd never completed middle school, had never taken anyone out on a date. And here he was, locked in the middle of a goddamn gunfight with, arguably, the greatest tactical force that had ever existed. There was admittedly something wrong with this.

_How is this my life? How did I end up here?_

In the time it took to reign in his giggles and wipe the wet away, Jesse realized that it had gone quiet outside. At first he believed that he'd killed them all, but then quashed the thought almost immediately. A full minute rolled by before his curiosity got the better of him, and he twisted onto his belly to painstakingly inch towards the edge, taking great care to remain unseen. The remaining agents had left their positions to gather on the road, all facing the same direction and standing dully at ease. Jesse was dumbfounded by their gall. A group of targets all in one place, distracted... this was a sniper's wet dream! But before he had the chance to prop up his gun and begin to pick out targets, the mob parted, and at their head came a figure whom Jesse swore had just extricated itself from a bad dream.

The man easily passed six foot, and unlike the other agents was mostly unprotected, save for a matte black chestpiece and plated boots that encompassed his legs up to the knees. There were holsters for flashbangs and ammo magazines around his thighs, and gripped in each fist were some of the meanest looking shotguns Jesse had ever seen. The hoodie he wore must have been cooking him from the inside out, but the determination of his stature gave nothing away. He was a walking armory, a living weapon, and it was plain how his presence commanded obedience from his men, the enemy, the very road he walked on.

Jesse knew, with a corporeal shudder, exactly who this man was.

A lackey stood at the commander's elbow, throwing a brief salute before making his report. From his current height Jesse couldn't make out what was being said, he could see the man in charge dishing out commands, hand slashing horizontally in a 'spread out' motion. The order was acknowledged as agents began to drift into the buildings, leaving their boss on the blacktop.

It took less than moment for the man to crane his neck upwards, and he and Jesse locked eyes for a brief, terrifying moment.

Jesse wasn't about to stick around and shake hands; he pushed off from the ledge and back into the gloom, pelting down eroded corridors and twisting spaces. More than once he found himself at a dead end, having to flip around and retrace his footsteps to a more promising tunnel. Daylight fractured in from cracks in the rock, casting him in and out of darkness as he ran, and he was holding a memory in his mind quite suddenly: _Cottonwoods along the river. Lizards. A skull in the arroyo._

Down one branching path, further along, behind him, came a distinctly bird-like warble.

The crack of a gun sounded against his left ear, sound doubled and thrown off the uneven walls in sputtering waves. The report was banshee-shrill, and Jesse clapped a hand over his ear and howled as he turned circles in the dark, searching for the source of the shot.

There-- a cleft in the sandstone ceiling was letting in watery light to pool at Jesse's feet, and pressed into it, pointing down, was the blocky muzzle of a shotgun.

_How the hell did he get up here?_

Jesse didn't question it-- he ran, and the person holding the shotgun kept stride above him. A bullet was sent down through every slot of light, ricochets adding a new tier to the danger. Jesse charged on, firing up every chance he got. He marveled at the stamina of this soldier; there was uneven footing and plants to dodge on top of the cliff, but his pursuer was keeping excellent pace, while Jesse was beginning to wear himself out. He fired, bullet cleaving the rock at the rim of a fissure with a squeal.

“Fuck you!” he raged, and there came a laugh from beyond, garish and grim.

All at once he was past the gaps in the rock, and the darkness was absolute, angle of the path sloping down dramatically. But he kept at it, sucking great mouthfuls of air, pressing on and away from the shooter. And then came light, but neon and buzzing, and Jesse made the turn into the proper corridor at last. At the very end of his line of sight he could see the fleeing back of a Deadlock, and Jesse reigned in his resolve and sprinted after them, legs throbbing and lungs heaving with the effort.

“Wait up! Goddamn it, wait!”

Ahead was the lift-- little more than a crate attached to a series of chain pulleys-- illuminated by a weak overhead lamp, and Deadlocks from all over the caves were beginning to pile in. He was close enough to see Annie and Reese, and he was _so_ close, less than fifty feet, reaching, almost there-

And then Reese seized the lip of the chain link gate and brought it down on its lock, cutting Jesse off. Unable to brake, Jesse's momentum carried him right into the gate, which in turn deposited him unceremoniously onto the ground, sending up a puff of dust in the weak light. Sides splitting, throat parched and abrasive, he stared agog at the Rebels in the lift as they in turn milled about in panic, wanting to be off as soon as possible.

Bleating: “Wha-- Reese, let me in for fuck's sake! It's not funny, come on!” Heaving himself to his feet, Jesse toppled forward and twisted his fingers into the chain link. His expression must have been wild, because everyone in the lift took a step back. Stricken, Jesse saw Annie's fingers poised over the controls, ready to take them all down and out. But he wasn't on there, he should be on there, they were _abandoning_ him!

“No! No, don't!”

The switch was thrown down with a solid _clunk_ , as were the Deadlocks. The lift dropped out of sight at a speed that made Jesse's stomach lurch, almost in free fall. Shouts of surprise and terror rung up from the shaft, but soon those too trailed off into motes, absorbed by the dark press of the caves.

He was numb. He was torpid. They had left him... They had looked him in the eyes and _left_ him, after he'd stayed behind to fight! Jesse felt a solid knot rise in his throat, and before he could suppress it, all the bourbon he'd had that afternoon was splattered across the sandy floor. He clung to the chain link, quaking and continuing to heave when there was nothing left to expel, bile rising and tears stinging his eyes, exhausted.

They had left him.

Someone was coming up the corridor... the distant scuff of boots on grit told him that much. Jesse turned to meet the newcomer, knees knocking, inhaling with a wet rattle. The lift generator was sapping power from the lights lining the ceiling, and their dirty fluorescence was sputtering in and out, giving the man a vaporous, unsteady outline.

Jesse couldn't begin to guess how he'd found his way into the caves so quickly, but it hardly mattered. There wasn't anywhere he could run now.

“You gonna kill me?”

No response. The man kept on coming, untroubled as he moseyed along.

“Come on, let's get it over with.” He had one magazine left on his belt, and he popped it into his Beretta impatiently, hacking, spittle clinging to his lips. Again, no response. His indifference was lighting a fire under Jesse; he stamped his foot, urging the man on, free hand flapping in a 'get over here' motion.

“Come on,” he crowed, “Come on!”

When the soldier failed to comply, Jesse was aware of some part of his resolve snapping, twanging through his body like a snapped guitar string.

“ _Come on, you son of a bitch! Come on!_ ” The gun was swung up, and Jesse fired an immaculate shot into the muscle of the soldier's arm, report deafening in the stony anthill of the caves. The man did not cry out or stagger or even flinch; instead it seemed to be the catalyst he needed to begin to close the rest of the distance between him and his quarry, sprinting, and this was Jesse's cue let to let fly the shrillest rebel yell he could manage and tear down the corridor to meet him.

 But something happened before he could get in another shot, before the two of them crashed against each other-- in the failing neon the soldier flung his shotguns away, twisted an arm behind him, and hurled an object towards Jesse with all the prowess and speed of a major league pitcher. He felt it whistle past his face, heard it bounce off the floor with a metallic chime, and it gave two electronic blips before the whole world was brought down in a wall of sand and shrieking wind. Jesse was hurled against the ground, plastered there for a split second with the breath torn from his lungs, before a stronger secondary blast sounded. His side struck a protruding chunk of rock, and with the toe of his boot he gleaned that he was skidding rapidly across the floor-- but there was nothing he could have done. His senses had been stolen from him, all control lost, and there existed nothing but the storm as his pulse beat madly in his ears, accompanying the furious din.

And then it was over. The world came back to Jesse in shoddy, irregular patches: the horrific ache in his side, the clatter and rush of settling rock and sand. A furious pealing had started up, and his shaking hand made a Herculean effort to feel its way up his neck and dip a finger into his ear, wincing, finding the slickness of blood. It was then he realized he should probably try to breathe, and his gulping wheezes were made doubly eerie as they rippled through the stillness of the corridor.

He was there-- the man. Reyes. Whether looming over him or crouching beside him, Jesse couldn't tell. The blast had knocked the lights out, but he felt his presence all the same.

“Take him.”

Hands descended to grip his hair and shoulders, to haul him into a sitting position, and something was drawn over his head and cinched around his neck-- some kind of sack-- and his senses were bundled away yet again.

They were dragging him, urging him on, wrenching his arms behind his back to cuff him. His legs worked only in keeping himself upright, and he was ushered over uneven ground, through a mass of pressing bodies, up a clanging metal ramp. Shoved onto his ass into what felt like a molded plastic seat, and his ankles were cuffed, lashed to the floor or some bulkhead. The gyrating thrum of an engine sounded from nearby; without all of his equilibrium, gravity pressed him mercilessly into the seat, and he could only groan.

The world swayed and shuddered, and Jesse tried to ignore the pain flaring up beneath his pecs. Blood from his ear was beginning to crust over, and every jolt or jostle opened up what had begun to scab over, causing the sack to begin adhering to the side of his head. The movement and noise and discomfort continued, and Jesse wondered vaguely if this was what hell must be like. _No. More like limbo._

And suddenly it was there. In his mind's eye, the _Coelophysis_ came loping out of the gloom, dappled skin and quick steps overstimulating and vivid.

Out loud, Jesse managed to croak, “What's going on? Where am I?”

The English language was unsuited for its mouth, words taut and jangling-- a fingernail being drawn over the tines of a comb.

“You're not in New Mexico anymore, Dorothy. That's for damn sure.”

 

 


End file.
